


Alla Nonna

by sidewinder



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Cooking, F/M, Family, Ghosts, ToT: Chocolate Box, Trick Or Treat Prompts Challenge, Trick or Treat: Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-18 05:41:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12382041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sidewinder/pseuds/sidewinder
Summary: Sonny gets some additional "help" while trying to prepare one of his favorite recipes for Amanda.





	Alla Nonna

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Naemi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naemi/gifts).



Amanda rushed to her apartment door at the sound of Sonny’s insistent knocking. He’d texted her about an hour ago, asking if it was okay if he arrived early for their planned dinner this evening. She’d said that was fine. But she’d hadn’t expected him to arrive _quite_ this early, and with his arms overladen with grocery bags.

“Jeez, Sonny, are we cooking for an army today?”

“No army, just you ’n me. But, ah...think you could give me a hand?”

“Here, here, give me that!”

Amanda grabbed a plastic bag dangling precariously from his fingertips and ushered him inside. She took hold of a second tote about to slip from the crook of his arm and then lead him into the kitchen. He breathed a sigh of relief as he dumped the rest of bags on the table there. “I hope I didn’t forget anything,” he fretted.

“You’re kidding, right? All this for one meal and you’re worried you forgot something? I don’t think I ever buy this many groceries for one week. Not even with the way Frannie eats.” Amanda shook her head, not sure if she was impressed or terrified about what Sonny had planned for them.

“I know, I know, it’s a lot of stuff. A lot of work, too, which is why I had to get started early if it’s gonna be done by this evening.”

“And here I thought you were looking for an excuse to spend extra time with me,” Amanda replied, giving him a wink and a sly smile.

“Hey, maybe I’m guilty as charged of that, too,” he said, his own grin betraying endearing embarrassment.

She gave him a quick kiss to let him know she didn’t mind—not at all, in fact. And the kiss might have lasted longer if Frannie hadn’t come barging in the kitchen, barking and jumping up and down, to see if any of the food was for her.

“Easy, girl, c’mon. Let me distract you with some treats,” Amanda told the dog, trying to give Sonny some peace to unpack and sort through his stuff.

She and Sonny had promised each other that they’d take this whole “relationship” thing slow. Test the waters, inch by inch, before diving in deep. Their friendship and working partnership meant too much to both of them to risk that. But cooking together on Sundays had been a routine for some time before even taking these small steps forward. Amanda appreciated the one-on-one chance to learn from Sonny, when he was so enthusiastic about food and sharing his knowledge. Her own mother had never cared to do so; cooking was a task Beth Anne Rollins rarely bothered with, or was often too far into the bottle by the evening hours to do very well at all.

“So what are we making today?” Amanda asked, going back to helping him unpack once she’d diverted Frannie’s attention. She saw canned tomatoes, a bottle of wine, green herbs, a container of what looked to be fresh pasta noodles, and various packages wrapped in brown paper, like from an old-fashioned butcher.

“My grandmother Marina’s lasagna,” he told her. “It was always my favorite as a kid, the main reason I didn’t mind if we had to spend a Sunday visiting her. I knew she’d make it for us every time, even though it was so much work. I used ask her to make it for my birthday, too.”

“Lasagna instead of a cake?”

“That’s what I’d ask my grandma Aurora to make, her famous Sicilian cassata. _Total_ sugar overload. Like crack for a skinny Italian boy.”

Amanda laughed at the mental image. She enjoyed Sonny’s stories about his family. It was nice to hear about one that actually seemed so...well, _functional_. “So is this a Sicilian recipe, too?”

“No, Northern Italian. See, Marina—my dad’s mother—her parents came over from a small town near Treviso. That was pretty unusual since most everyone in our neighborhood could trace their family roots back to Naples, Palermo...the south. Poorer country, completely different style of cooking. So Marina and Aurora used to constantly fight about food: the right way to cook things, whether to use garlic or onions, butter or olive oil, rice or polenta...”

“Speaking of ingredients, if we’re making lasagna then where’s all the cheese?” Amanda interrupted.

“That’s one of those things they fought about! Marina’s lasagna only uses some parmesan, and a white sauce from flour and milk. It comes out really meaty and a little crispy. The crunchy end pieces are the best part. When Aurora made lasagna, she did it with ricotta and mozzarella, and no meat—just a tomato sauce, possibly some eggplant if anything else. That’s probably more like what you’re used to. It was real good in its own way, mind you, but...I figured you haven’t had a lasagna like Marina’s before.”

“You’re probably right about that. So...where do we start?”

“I gotta get the meat sauce going first. You can help me by chopping up the vegetables while I mince and mix the beef, veal and pancetta.” He had put aside the packages of meat and pulled out a cutting board, but was now glancing around the kitchen with a frown.

“Something wrong?” Amanda asked.

“Yeah...Did you put anything away in the fridge already?”

“No. Why?”

“Damn, I hope I didn’t forget the vegetables, or leave that bag at the check-out this morning. I could have sworn I bought everything I needed...”

* * *

“Aurora, stop playing games and give him back his carrots!”

Aurora shot an icy glare in Marina’s direction. It was a well-practiced look of menace, one she’d employed for decades in both in the realm of the living and in the afterlife. “Fine,” she huffed, retrieving the bundle of carrots from where she’d hid them, for the moment, in the back of Amanda’s pantry. She left it on the kitchen table next to the cutting board while Sonny and Amanda were peering into the fridge, distracted.

“And the celery and mushrooms.”

“All right, all right!” She threw those packages back down on the counter-top as well. “I still think it’s too many vegetables for a lasagna. And where’s the ricotta? The sugar for the tomatoes?” She shook her head in disgust. “It’s going to be too sour, too dry.”

“And your lasagna was always a too-sweet, gloppy mess. No wonder Sonny liked mine the best.”

“Hmph! That might be, but you couldn’t bake a cake to save your life! That’s why the poor boy’s still so skinny. And single.”

“Oh, shush,” Marina scolded Aurora. “Let him cook this properly, and then maybe we’ll finally see some great-grandchildren some day.”

* * *

“Look, there they are!” Amanda proclaimed as she turned around and looked at the table, spotting the vegetables.

“Oh thank God.” Sonny shook his head. “I must be losing it. How did I not see they were there?”

“Easy to miss with everything else you brought today.”

“I guess so. Either that or you’ve got gremlins in your kitchen.”

“Or a ghost?” Amanda suggested.

“Don’t joke about that!” he hushed her.

“Why, some kind of Italian curse or superstition I don’t know about?”

“No, it’s just... Sometimes when I’m making one of my grandmothers’ recipes, I swear it feels like they’re still there in the kitchen with me,” Sonny confessed.

“That’s sweet.”

“Maybe. Though if you ever got the two of them together in the _same_ kitchen? Like for Easter or Christmas dinner? It could seem like the start of a holy _war_ instead of a holy day.”

* * *

“ _Che fai!_ Get away from the stove before I hit you with my mezzaluna!” Marina warned.

“I told you. The sauce is going to stick and burn without more liquid. It needs more tomatoes, and then some sugar.”

“It needs nothing but for you to leave it alone!” Marina slapped the measuring spoon out of Aurora’s hand, sending it (along a considerable amount of granulated sugar) flying across the kitchen.

“ _Maronna mia!_ You are impossible,” Aurora groaned.

“And _you_ are a constant meddler. Leave Sonny to make my recipe the way it’s meant to be! Did you see me complaining when he made your arancini last week? Those monstrous, greasy things.”

“If you weren’t dead already, I would put the _maloik_ on you.”

* * *

“Did you hear something?” Amanda asked. While they were waiting for the sauce to cook down, they’d taken a break to catch up on the latest episode of “Heart’s Desire”.

“Yeah, let me go check, make sure Frannie didn’t get into anything.”

Sonny got up from the sofa, only to return a few minutes later. “Think she knocked a measuring spoon off the counter. Weird, ’cause I didn’t plan on putting any sugar in the sauce, but the bag was out on the counter.” He sat back down, this time venturing an arm around Amanda’s shoulders to sit closer to her. It made him happy how easily she slipped into the light embrace, how good it felt.

“Could be those gremlins you mentioned.”

“Yeah. Though I gave the sauce a taste and thought, a touch of sugar isn’t a bad idea. Balances out the wine a bit.”

* * *

“I told you,” Aurora said, watching the cozy scene from the kitchen doorway, gloating.

“Shush.”

* * *

Amanda and Sonny worked on the rest of the lasagna once the sauce was ready. First they made the béchamel sauce, then they assembled the layers of noodles and filling. Finally they topped it all with plenty of grated cheese before throwing it in the oven to bake. “About an hour and then we should be ready to eat,” he said.

“Good because I’m _starving_ after smelling that sauce cook for hours.” Jesse started to cry, having woken up from her afternoon nap. “See?” Amanda said. “You’re even making Jesse hungry. In fact I should feed her now so we can eat in peace.”

“I can help with that,” Sonny offered.

“No, you sit and relax,” she insisted. “You’ve done enough work for a day that’s supposed to be your day off.”

“But helping out with Jesse is hardly work to me.”

“I know.” Amanda smiled. “And that...that’s one of the things I really...appreciate about you, Sonny.” She gave him another kiss, this time without Frannie coming along to interrupt them.

* * *

Marina nudged Aurora, and the two women smiled at each other—petty squabbles over cooking momentarily forgiven, if never forgotten.

“They make a beautiful couple, don’t you agree?” Marina asked.

“Yes. And they’ll make beautiful babies together.”

“Stop pushing them. They have their hands full right now with one _bambina_ and such nasty, horrible work they have to do.”

“True,” Aurora acquiesced. They watched the two young people head off to the bedroom to take care of Jesse. “We’d better keep an eye on the lasagna for them, in case they get distracted.”

“Mm.” Marina went to the stove, to take a taste of the meat ragù left over in the pot on the stove.

“How is it?” Aurora asked.

“Almost as good as I used to make. Even with your sugar in it.”

“Well it does have the most important ingredient in it—his nonnas’ love.” At the sound of a baby’s laughter in the other room, the two women raised their glasses of wine in a toast to the happiness of the living.

 


End file.
